Out fishing with Annie on his lap, a cigar in one hand and a ginger ale in the other, watching the sunset.

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One page Stories:In Light of the Writing Thread....

I posted this to a one page story Blog a couple of years ago....it was a fun exercise. Let's see your One Pagers

Buckley's Universe

T. Stormcrowe

Dr Buckley was having a bad day. It started when he initiated his experiment into Zero Point Energy. When he started up the equipment, all the sounds outside his lab suddenly quit. When he decided to take a break and get a cup of coffee, he got up to leave the lab. When he opened up the door to go to the coffee machine, he encountered a silver wall across the door.

"What the hell?" Dr Buckley exclaimed! He turned and ran back to his desk and tried to shut down the equipment, but to no avail! "HMMM", He thought, "What have we here?". Dr Buckley turned to his notes to try to figure out what was going on and thought about that little section of the equation that had been bothering him. "Well, I guess I have something to worry about after all!" He said with a rueful smile.

Journal of Dr Joseph Buckley, September 15, 2036
I initiated my experiment into tapping Zero Point Energy today. I seem to be trapped in a pocket universe created accidentally when I started the equipment. All the tests I have run show absolutely nothing outside of the silvery surface outside of my lab door. I can't seem to shut down my equipment and am currently drawing power off of reserve batteries. I'm not sure what will happen when they die. I figure they will crap out in about two hours. It is 10:00AM now. With any luck I'll be out by lunch

11:00AM September 15, 2036
The air is getting a bit stale and smoky, but without cigarettes I'd go nuts! Batteries are at the halfway point now. I'm really getting nervous now as the corners of my lab are showing the same silvery encroachment. Apparently I'm in a sphere and it's shrinking! I tried to get an image of what's outside of the sphere, but when I pushed a webcam through all I got was absolutely nothing, literally! I tried to retrieve the webcam and got back a cut off USB cable. I think I have a problem!

11:30AM September 15, 2036
I'm surrounded by the sphere now. My lab walls are no longer visible anymore. The batteries are below one quarter charge and I'm at a loss how to conserve power. I'm writing by the light of a candle now as I've lost the emergency lights to the sphere. Worst of all I only have one cigarette left! I've been working the math and have come to the conclusion that I'm screwed! I think I might have wiped out the Universe when I tried to tap into the Zero Point. I believe I might have interrupted the quantum flicker cycle.

11:45AM September 15, 2036
The sphere has contracted to about ten feet in diameter now. It's also starting to vibrate. My desk is half engulfed and my computer quit functioning when the sphere ate my tower. The batteries are going to die any minute now and I'm smoking my last cigarette now. It's the best tasting cigarette I've ever had! The batteries are dying now and the sphere is collapsing! Oh Lord, I think I'm going to die..........................................................

The sphere collapses into a quantum point and explodes.........Creation begins.

. “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”- Fredrick Nietzsche

"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." - Immanuel Kant

She waited, her body tense in anticipation, every muscle taut. She crouched low, almost hugging the ground. She felt a breeze brush passed her, carrying the scent of what she was after. She could smell other things in the air. Freshly blooming flowers; roses, lilacs, and irises. Her big, bright green eyes catching any movement from the rustling of leaves in the tree that was giving her shade, to the streams of light changing as leaves ran in and out of the sun.

She slowly stepped forward and stopped again. Did he see her? She waited, ready to turn and run at the slightest acknowledgment of her. No, he had not seen her. She took another step towards him and stopped. Again, he did not sense her presense. She was close enough to smell him now. She was close enough to hear his movements.

She tried to press herself further down, hoping the wind direction would not change. Her heart starting pounding in her chest. Would he hear her, would he feel the beating of her heart through the ground? He heard something, he had heard something. All her careful planning was ruined.

No! He had heard something, but it was coming from the opposite direction. He looked away from her. This was it; she had to do it now.

Like a compressed spring, she exploded from her hiding spot and leapt towards him. Her weapon facing him, she dove.

Her unexpected action caught him off guard. He had nowhere to go. Her weapon drove deep into his body. He felt his energy being sapped; his thoughts became fuzzier. He became limp.

She had done it! She had killed him. With pride. she backtracked to her house. She was high on adrenaline and didn't care who knew what she had done. When she got home, she climbed into her bed and slept, waiting for the inevitable.

He climbed out of her bed and walked slowly down the stairs. By the time he had reached the bottom step, he knew what she had done. "Arghh.. stupid cat. Not another mouse."

Not even close to a full story, but something I started once but never got too far along. I kinda like the feel of it.

Friday, January 29

Flying out of Houston on the first flight from Hobby to Dallas. Southwest Airlines flight who-cares, departure... way the hell too early. Flying north over the thunderheads, I could see the lightning flashing inside the clouds. Conroe’s getting a good watering this morning.

Didn’t grab a newspaper before I boarded. And the only thing Southwest hands out in flight is USA Today. I hate USA Today. But is the inflight magazine, with its cover story about Vince McMahon and the rebirth of the World Wrestling Federation any better? Grumbling, I pick up the USA Today sports page and read the latest volleys from Shannon Sharpe heading into Super Bowl weekend.

The plane lands at Love Field and I make my way to the rental car counter. Twenty minutes later, I’m in one of those absurdly generic mid-size cars on my way to Wichita Falls on a mission. I’m going over the facts in my head.....

Vance Taylor, millionaire, my client--a man worth over $50 million--more than I’ll make in my life. He made his money in oil and car dealerships in Wichita and Archer counties. He had a reputation as a “shrewd” business man. In other words, Vance Taylor is a sonofa*****; be a week late with your car payment, and you can be certain to get a visit from Mr. Taylor’s repo men. Mr. Taylor had few friends and a lot of enemies. They always said he could never get a fair trial in Archer county.

Everything was fine until 1985 when Mr. Taylor was in a two car collision. For a younger man, it was a mere fender bender, but it put Mr. Taylor in the hospital and away from his business affairs for six months. Somebody, I don’t know who, had the bright idea of setting up a temporary guardianship naming Taylor’s wife, Mary, as guardian. Months later, Taylor was better but no one thought to dissolve the guardianship. It didn’t matter. It was Mary. And everything was fine until Mary got cancer and wound up in chemotherapy and on painkillers, 24-7. It was then that Sandy, Taylor’s daughter, stepped in.

Sandy is the family black sheep--married five or six times; a lawyer and Lord-knows-what-else in Wichita county. Next thing you know, Sandy is Vance’s guardian and he’s living in the Wichita Falls Best Western on his social security check. Meanwhile, Sandy's just bought a new house with the interest-free, zero collateral “loan” of $750,000 she gave herself from the guardianship estate. And to top it off, there’s something else going on. Sandy's managed to do this right under the nose of the county judge, who appears more concerned with covering his ass than watching Vance’s assets. The judge has been heard to say he’ll hold anyone in contempt who questions his rulings on the guardianship estate. I have to wonder if I’ll make it back to Houston without a trip to the Wichita county jail.

The latest wrinkle is that Sandy has talked Mary into placing her half of Vance’s and her community property into a trust and, because Vance is a ward, dragging his half of the property in, too. Then the entire contents of the trust was poured into a family limited partnership naming guess-who as the managing partner. Maybe the judge is pissed because he’s not getting his piece of the action anymore; or at any rate, his piece of something. Sandy doesn’t need his approval now. All these legal and financial maneuverings were accomplished with the very able help of one of the biggest and most politically connected law firms in Texas--the target of my small firm’s malpractice action in a suit that could be worth tens of millions.

All these thoughts swirled through my head as I drove through the drizzle toward Wichita Falls. I could see the arc of a rainbow spanning the road and could see both ends as they touched the ground. Maybe an auspicious sight. It’s the only one for a while. Wichita Falls is a hole.

At the Wichita county clerk’s office, I was greeted by the probate clerk, Terri “with an ‘i’.” She was clad in a white turtleneck and a Denver Broncos tee shirt over the top. I told her I needed a certified copy of a guardianship file and she said “no problem, which one?” As I read the number to her, I could see her eyes grow wide. There was silence for a moment. “Do you know how big a file that is?” I have an idea, I responded. Let me show you, she said, and dragged me to a file drawer completely full from front to back with papers. She waited for my reaction. When she didn’t get one, she led me back to the counter. Like a petulant schoolgirl, she spat out “I’m gonna need a deposit.” I produced my wallet and a roll of cash and began peeling off hundred dollar bills one at a time. “Let me know when it’s enough,” I said.

Twelve Benjamins later, I called my office on the cellphone. “Congratulations,” I told Paul. “We just made Wichita County history with the single largest certified copy order the probate clerk here has ever seen. If you had ideas of my doing this surreptitiously, I think I just blew my cover.” “Don’t worry,” he told me. Just do the rest of the stuff we talked about--check the property and litigation records here and in Archer City, pick up the trust file from the Archer County district clerk, and don’t forget to go by the lawyer’s office in Dallas to get the videotape and on and on and on.....

I got to Archer County in the early afternoon. Talked to the clerk there and asked her to make me copies of the Herring file. That’s the one where Sandy represented her dad. Told the court that he couldn’t get a fair trial in Archer county. Her story’s different now.